


✿ Between Bad Blood

by orphan_account



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: F/F, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3654981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tom, everything is going to change."</p><p>Thomas felt that he always managed to get caught in the middle of bad things.<br/>After the sudden death of his father, eight years since his family split in two, things were going to change in the life of Thomas Greene; and he would find himself caught in the middle like never before. With his half-brother Aris, Thomas has little choice but to move to the City, reuniting with his twin sister and a family that was taken from him, but can family grudges really heal over with time?<br/>This is also the year that Thomas will meet the students of Glade Grammar and Right Arm Comprehensive, but behind the smiles of charming new friends are secrets and bad habits.<br/>Caught between new feelings, old friends and secrets beyond anything he could ever imagine, Thomas finds himself in the middle once again. Who knows what trouble really comes with change, will bad blood between family and friends heal or spill?</p>
            </blockquote>





	✿ Between Bad Blood

[✿  Leaf falling, Autumn calling, Dark clouds forming.  ✿](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PndEQP3xd_Q)

 

It had all been too much for a moment. All the fake sympathy around him, the black umbrellas and black coats. The casket lowering down and down into the ground.  
The blur of questions in Thomas’ head and the mumbling building like thunder around him. The people were crying, _why were these people crying? They didn’t know him enough to cry._

Maybe Thomas hadn’t known him either.

Rain was tap-tap-tapping against his cheap leather shoes and before he knew it, his feet were tearing away from the graveyard, into the forest ahead. Thomas broke away from the procession, ignoring Aris’ calling him. Away from the mourning crowd, deep into a rural tangle of trees. His father was lowering into the ground and Thomas was running hard against it. He ran through the rain into the forest. Staggering, he caught a tree.  
  
 _“Son, everything will be okay.” he had said._

 _You lied to me, dad._  
He punched the tree, he punched the ground, splashing the dirty water. Phantom thoughts were spinning through his head. The forest was a mesh of green before everything was a mesh of black.  
  
\-   -   -

Among the silence and the thoughts, Thomas heard Teresa close the kitchen door. Then the sharp heels of her shoes tapped over to him, like the rain. Like his father’s pen had done against the counter, the heart moniter; all so fresh in his mind. Tap, tap, beep, beep, one long endless beep.  
  
He didn’t bother looking up. He didn’t have to look up from the ground to see it was her, the deep stare he found himself in was a comfortable one. Maybe if he stared deep enough he could will reality into something else. He ignored the broken glass on the floor, however.

“Sorry for your loss.” Teresa said finally.  
His thoughts cleared momentarily then, and he felt like her words, as sharp as her heels, had woken him from some bizarre dream. He suddenly noticed the dry dirt crumbling from his pants. There was a cold cup of coffee in his hands. How long had he been standing in the kitchen on his own?  
  
 _“I’m sorry for your loss” she had said._   
She hadn’t said it the way others do at funerals, the way a hundred other voices said to him earlier on that day. With tilted eyebrows and a tilted intention, so insincerely filled with a lack of anything helpful to say at a time when nothing can be said. Teresa never said anything that was untrue or unnecessary.

She was definitely sorry, for Thomas’ loss.

My loss? Thomas thought.

“Tom. Even you had to know this day was coming.”  
  
He looked up at his sister then, and despite his best efforts to will teleportation he was still in his old grey grimy kitchen after the funeral procession of their late father. Sickly lemon linoleum flooring was still at his feet, his father’s reading glasses were on the counter. The cheap microwave still had numbers flashing from a meal their dad must have made half-heartedly and forgotten.  
The scene definitely wasn’t something Teresa could wake him from.

Their dad had been popular, apparently. Though the crowds of huddled men in suits and pretty ladies crying tearlessly were utterly faceless and meant nothing to Thomas. Their empty words of “sorry” meaning even less.  
  
“Mom came.” Teresa spoke again. “Well, she dropped us here. Chuck and myself I mean, she didn’t stay.

“Yeah.” Thomas said looking back into his cold cup. “She had a habit of that sorta thing.” He didn’t even have the energy to scoff.

“Tom..”

It had been three years since Thomas had last seen their mother. She left when they had absolutely nothing, when it had all been taken away. The house was gone, the cars were gone. He had watched their furniture being repossessed and before he knew it he was looking at the walls of a leaky bungalow that could barely home three people nevermind six. Their father had lost a business deal and that was that. But they didn’t live in the bungalow as a six for long. She was gone soon, like everything else. Teresa and Chuck were gone with her. Thomas had refused to go, he refused to let his father lose absolutely everything. Aris stayed too, lacking any choice in the matter.  
Then, with the rain dancing noiselessly on her slumped shoulders, his mother had placed a limp hand on his shoulder. Looking at him for a last time with his own sad eyes, she was gone.  
  


Out of the corner of his eye, Teresa moved to lean against a counter, before hesitating at the dirt there. Thomas couldn’t help but notice how out of place his sister looked in their run-down kitchen. As if her sheer untainted presence emphasised just how lacking the place they lived in was. She looked around the place absently, tapping her black nails against her mug. Suddenly Thomas didn’t see his own twin sister, instead of himself in her he saw his mother.

Despite his best efforts Thomas was suddenly very angry.  
  
“I wasn’t going to stay long.” Teresa said, as if reading his mind.   
  
“Yeah, well. You can see yourself out, I’m sure. You saw yourself in after all.”

“Tom-”   
  
“The door’s right there, as you’re aware. Tell Chuck I said hi.”

“Tom, seriously cut th-”

“I’ll send Aris your kind regards too, not that you’d believe him worthy of them.”

“Thomas! I just-”  
  
“No, no. You don’t have to grace us with your presence any longer.”

“Thomas, LISTEN TO ME!” She yelled. The echo of their father bounced around the walls in her voice, she heard it too.   
  
  


Then, all of a sudden, something about this miserable nightmare of a day felt very very real. Thomas’ legs bucked beneath him and before he knew it, he was sobbing in her arms. There was no point in this feud between them anymore, when there was nothing to fight for. They had been divided in sides for three years now, and for what?. Three years of taking up the parental roles for the sake of Chuck and Aris. Thomas hadn’t cried for three years, but he could make up for it now.  
He couldn’t pretend to be as strong as her when he was so entirely on the weaker side, the losing side.  
Their father was dead.

“Tom, it’s alright, I’m here.” Teresa said over, and over.

Here like his mom had never been, like his dad no longer was. She was here.  
Thomas felt Aris dip his head back on his shoulder, back to back like two halves. Chuck buried himself between Teresa and Thomas. The boys cried like they’d only learned how.  
Teresa hushed them, like a mother. But like a mother, she didn’t shed a single tear.

“Teresa I can’t do this.” Thomas said, as he began to gather his wits. Looking up at her he asked. “What are we supposed to do now? We can’t afford to stay here, we have nothing.”  
  
“That’s why you’re coming with me.” Teresa said softly, she wiped what remained of his tears with her thumbs. “It’s the only reason I came, Tom. To take you back, Aris too. It’s for the best.”

Anger swelled in him again, but it had no meaning in it. This option wasn’t one that was new to him, he had considered it; and with little to no money to their name, himself and Aris really had no choice. With their father dead, back to their mother was the only place to go. It felt like defeat, like sucumbing to the very thing that had lead to their destruction.

**\-   -   -   -**

They had no choice. Within 24 hours, their father was dead. Their world had changed.  
With empty hands and a single suitcase, they left their father. In a horizontal throne underground.

Summer was over, the rain had stopped. But for Thomas, what felt like a completely new turn of life was about to begin.  
  
It was like she read his mind, even in the time they had been apart, Teresa knew him well enough to feel it too.

**“Tom. Everything is going to change.”**


End file.
